Nearly 400 faithful from across Australia gathered in Sydney for the Parish Renewal Conference, a day organisers hope will be remembered as the moment a new wave of evangelisation took hold in the Sydney Archdiocese. Source: The Catholic Weekly.
Organised by the Sydney Centre for Evangelisation’s parish renewal team, the conference at the Liverpool Catholic Club on July 18 drew clergy, parish leaders and everyday Catholics eager to learn practical tools for sharing their faith and, just as importantly, to be renewed themselves.
American evangeliser Marcel LeJeune and Sr Susanna Edmunds OP delivered keynote addresses, setting an energetic and often disarmingly funny tone for a subject many Catholics find daunting.
Mr LeJeune opened with characteristic bluntness, admitting he doesn’t consider himself “the best evangelist”, a confession he said should comfort a room full of Catholics who, by and large, “aren’t very good at this stuff”.
His now-famous starting rules for evangelisation – “don’t be a jerk, and don’t be weird” – drew laughs, but underpinned a serious point: Australians, like Catholics across the Western world, have become too comfortable blending into a culture that no longer evangelises.
Quoting St Paul VI’s declaration that the Catholic Church “exists in order to evangelise”, Mr LeJeune insisted this identity isn’t optional extra work alongside caring for the poor or offering the sacraments.
“It’s the reason the Church exists at all.”
Sr Susanna took the afternoon session, likening the mission of evangelisation to climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge: “Thrilling from the top, but only possible with a safety harness and a guide”.
Christ calls us to greatness, she said, but he works through our weakness, not despite it.
Beyond the keynotes, attendees could opt to join six evangelising workshops offering practical information, advice, tools and formation to carry back into parish life.
Tania Rimac, Sydney Centre for Evangelisation’s parish evangelisation and formation leader, said her hope for what people carried out the doors was simple: encouragement.
“My hope is that people will go and give it a try. We are, as we know, the Church tells us, by the virtue of our baptism, we are called to go forward and make disciples of others,” Ms Rimac said, pointing to the Great Commission given to every baptised Catholic.
“It is scary, but the time is shifting and people are really responding to this call. Parish renewal means personal renewal.”
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Parish Renewal Conference fires up faithful for mission (By Darren Ally, The Catholic Weekly)
